CHRISTIANITY IN BRITAIN. The early history of the British Church is obscure; and although we learn from Tertullian and Origen, that Christianity had extended thither by the third century, it is not easy to fix the period at which regular churches were formed. It is certain, however, that the British Church in the fourth century was ruled by bishops, who regularly attended their sessions, and subscribed their decrees and canons. Three names, Eborus of York, Restitutus of London, and Adelphius of Caerleon-upon-Usk, with the names of a priest and a deacon, are found appended to the Council of Arles, celebrated in the year 314. So also they were present at Nice in 325, at Sardica in 347, and at Remini in 359. These facts alone are, in themselves, sufficient proofs to establish the validity of the Ancient Church of Britain-the episcopal form of her government—and her entire constitution as a branch of the Church of Christ, at a period of nearly 250 years before the arrival of Augustine, the missionary of Gregory the Great, A.D. 596. INQUISITION. The Inquisition, or Holy Office, as it is impiously termed, may be traced to Pope Lucius, who at the Council of Verona, in 1184, ordered the bishops to procure information of all who were suspected of heresy, and if they could not effect this in person, they were to enjoin it as a duty on their commissioners. In the beginning of the 13th century this order was reinforced, and the poor Albigenses and Waldenses severely felt its fury. Dominic, usually called St. Dominic, reduced this to practice, and was, if not the first Inquisitor, yet the founder of that order to which the management of the Inquisition was committed. In 1251, the Inquisition was established in Italy; in 1255, it was extended to France. The horrors accompanying the practices of this office, soon excited universal disgust in the best disposed Romanists. It was established in Spain about the middle of the 13th century. In 1484, the Supreme General Inquisition was founded at Seville by Queen Isabella, with the aid of Cardinal Pedro Gonzalez de Mendoza. In Portugal, it was received about 1536. The gradual progress of knowledge checked the bloodshed of this tribunal; and it rarely, of late years, terrified the world by displaying ranks of heretics led to the stake. The triumph of humanity in the entire abolition of this most cruel depositary of power, terrestrial and spiritual, was a prominent good arising from the evils of the French revolution, but it was for the Spanish Cortes to give the death-blow. For farther information on the subject of the Inquisition, the reader may refer to Prescott's Ferdinand and Isabella; Quart. Rev., vol. iv.; Llorentes' History of the Inquisition. PARLIAMENTS, MAGNA CHARTA, TRIAL BY JURY, FEUDAL LAWS, PARLIAMENT. The etymology of the word Parliament is properly a French or Norman word, signifying to speak the mind, and was originally spelt parle â ment. Parium la mentum, id est, a meeting of the Peers to lament and complain to each other of the enormities of the country, and thereon to provide for the same, is a definition frequently to be met with in the old writers; and, according to Lord Coke, it is called Parliament from parler la ment, every member speaking his mind for the general good of the commonwealth. Barrington derives it from a compound of two Celtic words, parly and ment, or mend. The ancient Parlemens of France, were unlike the Parliaments of England. In France, the Parlemens were courts of justice. All their edicts were grounded on the ordinances of the king. When there was any opposition to those ordinances, the king went in person, and held what is called a Lit de justice. He declared before them, that the ordinance before them was his actual will, and ordered the proper officer to register it. There was no mode of objecting to the will of the king after a Lit de justice. It was common with the kings of France to seize upon the lands of their nobles, and make an ordinance of sequestration, against which there was no remedy. The lands were annexed to the crown. Had the nobles of France defended their rights as the Barons of England did, France would not have remained so long a nation of slaves. The first Parliament in England was in 1116. HOUSE OF COMMONS. Although the first Parliament was in 1116, yet the House of Commons, as now constituted, takes its date from the reign of Henry III., May 14th, 1264. Earl Montfort, after defeating the king's troops, called a Parliament at Winchester in the king's name, which is shown by Dr. Brady to be the first wherein two knights for each county and two burgesses for each borough were summoned, and was the original of the House of Commons. Members obliged to reside in the places they represented, 1413; Francis Russell, son of the Earl of Bedford, was the first peer's eldest son who sat in the House of Commons, 1549; that remarkable for the epoch in which were first formed the parties of court and country, June 16th, 1620; a peer elected, and sat as a member of the House of Commons, 1649; the House of Commons committed a Secretary of State to the Tower, November 18th, 1678; their Speaker refused by the king, 1679; bill passed for triennial parliaments, November, 1694; the first British one met, October 24th, 1707; triennial act repealed, May 1st, 1716; act passed for septennial ones, 1716; their privilege of protection from arrest for debts relinquished, 1770; the lord mayor and an alderman of London committed to the Tower by the House of Commons, 1771; Sir Francis Burdett committed to the Tower by the House of Commons, on the motion of Sir Thomas Lethbridge, April 9th, 1810. The Reform bill passed in the session of 1832. The first mention of a Speaker of the House of Commons occurs in the Parliament 51 Edward III. His duties are to act entirely as the servant of the House which appoints him. He takes the Chair, which he cannot do unless forty members are present; maintains order; explains and informs on questions of order or practice if he is referred to. He can neither speak nor vote unless in the case of equality of votes, or in Committees of the whole House, where, as soon as the chair is taken, he is reduced to the footing of an ordinary Member. THE KING'S SPEECH. The first king's speech, as it is termed, was delivered by Henry I., in the year 1107. MAGNA CHARTA. The "Great Charter" was signed by John on the 15th of June, 1215, and confirmed by his successor, Henry III. It is reported to have been chiefly drawn up by the Earl of Pembroke and Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury. The ground where John, accompanied by the pope's legate and other prelates and followers, met the barons, was between Staines and Windsor, at a place called Runnymede; but better known in modern times as Egham race-course, and which is still held in reverence as the spot where the standard of freedom was first erected in England. There, it is said, the barons appeared with a vast number of knights and warriors, and both sides encamped apart, like open enemies. The barons, in carrying their arms, would admit but of few abatements; and the king's commissioners, as history relates, being for the most part in their interests, few debates ensued. The charter required of him was there signed by the king and his barons, which continues in force to this day, and is the famous bulwark of English liberty, which now goes by the name of Magna Charta. It is related that this very document was lost for near two centuries, and was discovered at last by the celebrated Sir Robert Cotton, who, on calling upon his tailor one day, discovered him in the act of cutting up an old parchment deed, with a great number of seals attached thereto. His curiosity was awakened, and he examined it minutely, when he discovered that it was the Great Charter, or Magna Charta of England! He took possession of it, and, had it not been for this timely rescue, the palladium of England's liberties would have been appropriated to the unholy office of measuring his majesty's lieges for coats and breeches. It is now deposited in the Cottonian Library, in the British Museum.* It is a curious circumstance, also, that out of twenty-six barons who signed Magna Charta, only three could write their names; the remainder merely signing, or having signed their marks TRIAL BY JURY. Some authors have endeavoured to trace the origin of juries up as high as the Britons themselves, the first inhabitants of our islands; but certain it is they were in use among the earlier Saxon colonies, this institution being ascribed by Bishop Nicolson to Woden himself, their great legislator and captain. When the Normans came in, William, though commonly called the Conqueror, was so far from abrogating this privilege of juries, that, in the fourth year of his reign, he confirmed all king Edward the Confessor's laws, and the ancient customs of the kingdom, whereof this was an essential and most material part. Afterwards, when the Great Charter, commonly called Magna Charta, which is nothing else than a recital, confirmation, and corroboration of our ancient English liberties, was made and put under the Great Seal of England, in the 9th year of king Henry, III., A.D. 1225, then was this privilege of trials by juries in an especial manner confirmed and established, as in the 14th chapter: that no amercement shall be assessed, but by the oath of good and honest men of the vicinage. And more fully in the twenty-ninth chapter: no freeman shall be taken or imprisoned, or be disseized of his freehold, or liberties, or free customs, or be outlawed, or exiled, or any other way destroyed, nor shall we pass upon him, or condemn him, but by lawful judgment of his Peers. This Grand Charter, having been confirmed by above thirty Acts of Parliament, the said rights of juries thereby, and by constant usage and common custom of England, which is the common law, are brought down to us as our undoubted birthright, and are, in fact, the best inheritance of every Englishman. In Stourhead Grounds, belonging to Sir Richard Hoare, Bart., * See Cottonian Library. is a tower erected in memory of Alfred the Great. Over the entrance is the following inscription: Alfred the Great, A. D. 870, on this Summit To him we owe the Origin of Juries, CONFINING JURORS FROM MEAT AND DRINK. An Italian author, in his Antiquities, plainly affirms, that this regulation was framed for the purpose of avoiding the unsound decrees consequent upon intoxication; and Dr. Gilbert Stuart very patiently and ingeniously affirms, in his Historical Dissertation concerning the Antiquity of the British Constitution, p. 238, that from the propensity of the older Britons to indulge excessively in eating and drinking, has proceeded the restriction upon jurors and jurymen, to refrain from meat and drink, and to be even held in custody, until they had agreed upon their verdict. EXEMPTION OF SURGEONS AND BUTCHERS FROM SERVING ON JURIES. The reason commonly assigned for the privilege of surgeons, in being exempt from serving on juries is, that they are too constantly in the habit of suppressing the human feelings. But this is not the real cause of the privilege, as appears from the following extract from Andrews' History of England: "In the same year (ie., 1513), the Corporation of Surgeons, consisting of twelve, a number being then thought equal to the care of the metropolis, petitioned parliament to be exempted from bearing arms, or serving on juries and parish offices; and their petition was successful." This, however, is not the case with the Knights of the Cleaver, commonly yclept butchers. In M'Queen's Historical Records, we find the following notice on the subject. During this session (1661), Mr. Hyde brought in a bill to prohibit butchers from serving on juries in cases of life and death, which unanimously passed both houses of parliament, and received the royal assent. It is very strange, continues the historian, that so judicious and humane an enactment had not been passed before; not that they (butchers) should be considered as devoid of the common feelings of humanity, but more liable to its infirmities, from their avoca |